If climbing out of bed is the worst part of your day, you'll relate to Laura Howard's poem Please Tell Me.
Laura, 18, a senior in John S. Davidson Fine Arts School's creative writing program, won the Young Adult Poetry Contest for the East Central Georgia Regional Library System in the high school division, a "first first-place" for the teen poet.
The contest received 140 applicants for the middle school and high school categories, said Jennie Feinberg, the young adult librarian.
Laura has been producing poetry since sixth grade. She prefers poetry to any other writing because it allows her to be more personal, more abbreviated and more real.
"That's what I feel comfortable writing," she said.
Much of her writing is intimate -- "heartbreak, love, typical teenage poems," she said -- but her selections for the contest don't give away any secrets.
Last year, she placed third for her poem Jonah , about a house on Telfair Street. She compared it to a whale, large and skeletal.
Stylistically, she prefers free verse and based her poem this year on Billy Collins' format. Her poems have come a long way since her first foray into poetry, she said.
"I used to write everything in rhyme," Laura said.
She advises poets hoping to get better to "write everything." When Laura puts down the poetry pen, she picks up her duties as one of the two senior editors for Davidson's literary magazine, The Ampersand.
Besides being published in The Ampersand, Laura's poems have also been in Pegasus , Abraham Baldwin Agricultural College's literary magazine, and Soy Nut Butter , published by The Wren's Nest.
Though poetry will always be a part of her life, she says, she plans on studying women's studies at Berea College in Berea, Ky., starting in the fall.
Reach Sarah Day Owen at (706) 823-3223 or sarah.owen@augustachronicle.com.
PLEASE TELL ME
How can you ask me
to sit up, put my
feet among the dirt and glass,
move my legs forward through the
custard air, when I am here,
head back on the bone-colored
wall, neck against an inherited
head-board.
Here I am safe
within the invisible walls
of sleep and love infested sheets,
under a quilt of christening
gowns and Sunday dresses.
Memories sewn together with dry
veins and a sharp point.
But beyond this ship
I would come to pieces.
My fingers would pull away
tendons from sockets,
arms from elbows, ankles from feet.
My hair would disintegrate
in the acid breath of loneliness.
No, I cannot leave
my hand-turned posts,
the cracked section of wood.
The scent of belonging,
familiar repose,
and the way my neck
feels against the moon-cool
pillow, whispering
dreams in my ear.
-- Laura Howard
icon.
